Episode Thirty-Two: The plotter vs. pantser myth that's holding you back
I’m a developmental editor & book coach who loves working with pantsers.
Does that surprise you? It shouldn’t.
Pantsers can write great books and no, I’m not going to sit here and tell you that you have to start using an outline for your projects. Instead, I’m going to tell you to figure out what works for you and then commit to making your books the best they can be within that process. It doesn’t matter how you do the work, as long as it gets done, and gets your book truly ready for readers.
Listen now to learn how I think of the difference between plotters and pantsers (hints it’s about which parts of the process light them up) and how I tested this idea in my classroom as a high school teacher.
Have a reaction to this episode? Come slide into my DMs - I’m @oliviahelpswriters on Instagram!
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Thanks for listening, keep writing, and keep getting better one word at a time!
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Thanks for listening, keep writing, and keep getting better one word at a time!
Transcript
Olivia (00:00)
As a book coach and an editor, I specialize in working with pantsers Typically, we think of pantsers as those writers who start their books without an outline, they just jump right in on page one and start drafting. And while that is true, I think that there is a deeper story there. And today I'm going to talk about what it really means to be a pantser, how to know if you belong to that category, and what it means for your writing process if you are in that bucket. So. If you have ever wondered if you're a pantser, if you have ever identified as a pantser, this episode is for you. And I can't wait to talk all about what makes pantsers successful, what makes us unique, and how our writing processes work differently than those who identify as plotters. All right, let's get started.
Welcome to episode 32 of the Better Writer Podcast. I am actually so excited for this episode simply because we have hit number 32. For whatever reason, I don't have a good excuse for this. I don't have a reason. It started in childhood. 32 is one of my favorite numbers. I love the number 32. So I'm very excited to hit this milestone that is meaningful only to me. So welcome to episode 32. To celebrate, we are talking about one of my favorite topics in writing which I feel like I say that every single episode, but I started this podcast to talk about the things that I love as a writer and editor and book coach.
So this is one of my especially favorite topics, pantsing. Because as a writer, I am a pantser. As an editor and a book coach, I love working with messy, messy drafts. And often that means I love working with pantsers. I love helping people sort through all of the random ideas and story sparks that came up as they started drafting. I love helping people figure out what is going to make their story the best it can possibly be. I am not afraid to make the
Big bold suggestions that are needed to help pantsers revise. I will tell you to cut 40,000 words. I will tell you to cut a character that you love because they are not doing anything in your story. I will also offer suggestions for how to make them relevant as well. I will never tell you that you have to do one specific thing, but I do love finding all the little seeds that pantsers plant as they draft, helping you then grow them into beautiful saplings.
Or wherever that metaphor wants to go for you. I just love helping pantsers navigate all of the messiness and creativity that is inherent in their process.
So today I want to talk about what it really means to be a pantser, how I define it, how I look at the process of being a pantser, and what that really means for your writing process. Because I think that there are a lot of misconceptions out there. I think that people like to talk about pantsers in a certain way that just isn't accurate to what I see as someone who is a pantser but is very committed to the craft. I became an editor and I became a book coach because I am obsessed with the craft. I love helping people write great books, not just any book. I'm not here to, you know, pat someone on the back and say you did great. It doesn't matter that you don't have a structure right now. That is not my job. I help people take their pantsed drafts and turn them into something wonderful. I also of course have clients who are not pantsers, but
I just want talk about what it really means, what it really means to the process. and just cut through some of the noise around pantsers and help you understand what it is going to take to be successful if you are someone who identifies as a pantser and hasn't had that conversation yet. Because oftentimes the conversation around pantsing is someone saying to you, if you're a pantser, you need to change. If you're pantser, you need to accept that you have to learn how to outline.
And there are absolutely times when using an outline can be beneficial at the beginning of your process where you might pants one book in a certain genre and you might be a plotter when you're writing something else. There is no one size fits all. But that is not the only answer. The the answer is not to just find the outlining system that works for you and then change yourself into a plotter. You can write great books as a pantser if you are willing to approach the process in the right way. All right, so let us jump in to what it really means to be a pantser. Alright. I think first off it is important to acknowledge the myth of pantsing. And thankfully I think things are starting to change or maybe I have just cultivated my algorithm such that I am only seeing content from people who are starting to embrace a more diverse approach to writing. But I think there is still this myth that being a pantser.
Is synonymous with being undisciplined. That a pantser is simply someone who does not have the discipline to sit down and create an outline in advance. That they are someone who refuses to cultivate a practice of planning ahead of time because they are unwilling to do so. And there's also the secondary element where sometimes plotters believe that panters are just in it for the fun of writing. and I know that sounds crazy to say that like, of course, writing should be fun. That seems very obvious. It's something that most of us come to, you know, initially at least as a hobby, as something that we do for fun because we're not making money from it in the beginning. Many of us will will not make a career out of it. And that is totally fine. But this is the idea that people are panters because they don't want their story spoiled for them, that it will not be fun.
To write if they already know how the story is going to end. And that a pantser is someone who is just pursuing that adrenaline rush of discovery. And if that's you, there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. I think what I'm what I'm trying to get at here is that part of the myth is that a pantser is prioritizing their enjoyment of the writing process over the reader's experience. And that's such a
It's such a false dichotomy that either you're having fun as a writer or you're writing great books. I I think again, it's just a way that people who are really committed to outlining are disparaging those who don't outline. Again, if you are someone who, you know, the experience of writing is ruined because you know the story in advance, that's fine. There is nothing wrong with that. again, it's all about figuring out what works for you. more so I think that again, it goes to that mythology of pantsers are just people who are pursuing this hedonistic pleasure of writing over the discipline of being a great writer, as if these two things cannot coexist, that we cannot have fun and enjoy the process and create great books for our readers. And you know, I think a lot of that is really tied into school culture and how we are taught to approach the writing process in school. way back in episode two of this podcast, I talked a lot about the lies that we are taught about writing in the education world. And I think this is one of them that everyone should outline.
And I think some of that moralizing that came back in school days when we have the kids who are following directions and outlining, and the kids who are not following directions and not outlining. I think some of that morality kind of tr travels with us as adults. But the point being that there are a lot of myths out there about pantsing, about not using an outline in the drafting process that are still pervasive and damaging because in my experience.
As a writer, as an editor, and actually going back to my days teaching high school, it's not the difference between disciplined and undisciplined. It's not the difference between the person who is committed to writing a great book and the person who wants to have fun writing.
That is not the true difference between panters and plotters And that is why I prefer to think of it in terms of plan-heavy writing and revision-heavy writing.
Ultimately, I think all writers are somewhere on that spectrum. And you could be anywhere along that line. I think a lot of people really are in the middle. but no matter where you are on that spectrum, from plan heavy to revision heavy, every writer is going through the same general steps of the writing process. It's just that they're diff doing different parts of the process in different stages depending on how they work best. So we'll start with the the plotter side. If you are a plotter, or a plan heavy writer, the bulk of your brainstorming and ideation happens at the outlining stage. You come up with your ideas as you outline. That is where you're able to refine them. You are able to generate all of your plot points, your conflicts, your character arcs, your characterizations, all of those things come to you in the brainstorming phase as you outline. Then those ideas get refined as you draft.
You are going to make little tweaks, you're gonna add on to things, you are gonna amplify what's already in the outline as you start actually writing the text of your story. Then you are going to finalize those ideas in revision. If you are truly a very plan heavy writer, where you know you are the person who has an outline that is a hundred pages, you are very likely to do minimal, if any, developmental revisions. You may have already solidified those things so much in your outline and in your draft.
That one of two things is true. Either your story is super solid and you do not need to revise. And so you don't, you move straight to editing. Or the other thing that can happen is maybe your story was deeply flawed at the outline stage. It was deeply flawed as you drafted. And it is still flawed when you get to the end of the process. But because you are such a plan-heavy writer, you do not have the ability to genuinely reconceive your story in revision. And so that is a novel that ends up in a drawer and you move on to the next project, you take what you learned. and I think those are the kinds of people who end up saying, I wrote seven novels before the one that was good enough to be published. Those are those people who are so plan heavy that by the time they get to the revision stage, even if that book were technically salvageable, they just do not have the capacity to actually make those changes because in their mind the story is set. So that is the plan heavy side.
On the opposite side, if you are a revision heavy writer, also known as a pantser, you may do no outlining. The idea is marinating, but the vast majority, if not all, of your brainstorming and ideation comes as you are writing the draft. You are making up plot points and characters and character arcs and world building as you go along. Naturally, because you are making things up as you go along, you might have something pop up on page 500 of your draft that is inconsistent with what you wrote on page one. But because you are a revision heavy writer, you're doing all of your refining at the revision stage in the process.
Of course, you have to be willing to do the work, which is where sometimes people get themselves into trouble. But if you are naturally a pantser, a revision heavy writer, all of that messiness of the drafting process is going to be addressed in revision because that is where you take all that raw material, your draft and you say, okay, on page 500, I introduce a brand new element of the world that I now need to bring back to page one. And you are going to go through that whole draft making those corrections and those changes, making sure the vision is coherent. That might take multiple rounds of revision. That's totally fine. But that is why I call them revision heavy writers, because if you are coming up with all of your ideas in the context of the draft, naturally you are going to have to do more rewriting to then make those ideas cohesive.
The plotter did that at the outlining stage, refining in the draft. You did the brainstorming ideation in the drafting phase. So now you need to refine in revision, probably going through multiple drafts. If we have done our jobs, the person who starts off doing the bulk of their work in the outline, and the person who does the bulk of that work in revision, they end up in the same place. They end up with a draft that is clear, coherent, has a structurally sound story, characters that we love. It is a story that is going to engage readers of that genre. Then everybody moves on to the editing phase where we are cleaning up typos, grammar, descriptions, all that good stuff. So ideally, everyone ends up with a book that is ready for readers.
Obviously, pantsing can go wrong if we are not willing to do that work in revision. If we write like a pantser and then think that we're gonna go through one round of revision like a plotter, that's just not going to happen and that is where we end up with pantsers who again, you could be the person who writes seven books. and then we throw them in a drawer, and maybe you will eventually get to a place where you can create a story on the first go around that is structurally sound. but that is unlikely to happen. I think if you were going to write like a pantser, you have to embrace revision. And that is why I don't call them draft heavy writers. I call them revision heavy writers because that is where the magic is really going to happen after you take all that raw material that you created for yourself. Now we have to actually shape it into something worth reading.
So those two pathways, they can both go wrong. If you are a plotter with a bad outline and you are stuck to that outline, your story will be bad at the end. Sorry, not sorry. That's just the truth. A bad outline will make a bad book. Just like a pantser who doesn't revise will end up with a bad book. A plotter who doesn't revise their outline, or maybe, you know, a plotter who is unwilling to revise could end up in the same exact place. Outlining is not a magic bullet. You have to figure out what works for you.
Do you need to refine your ideas before you commit them to the draft? You're a plotter, you're a plan heavy writer, that's great. I recommend that you get feedback on your outline. Do not start writing until a developmental editor or someone else qualified to give you that feedback has looked at your outline and said, yes, this is great, go forth. Because if you're not gonna revise, don't wait and send it to a developmental editor when you've already committed to the story. If you're not willing to make changes at that stage, if you lack the capacity to make changes at that stage, that's totally fine.
Know yourself, get feedback on your outlines. And if you are a pantser and you do not like revision, then maybe you are a person who needs to start outlining. because as a pantser, it is so, so highly unlikely that your entire story is going to be coherent because that is just not the nature of the process. If you are making it up as you go along, you are naturally going to add a conflict or a character or a world building world-building element. A story idea is going to pop up that has nothing to do with what came before. And that is unlikely to resonate with readers. We have to set that thing up. We have to make sure that the world building is coherent, that the character arc is coherent, that it's cohesive, and that work will need to happen in revision. So, all right, that was a bit of a rant. Welcome to my soapbox moment, but I feel very strongly about both embracing what works for you as a writer. But not at the expense of what is going to work for your readers. If you are planning to publish, if you want people to pay you for your work, you have to create good work. However, you get there is fine. If you get there, if you do the work to get there. So I'm not excusing shoddy writing under the guise of saying I'm a pantser. I think that's one of the things that actually pisses me off because I am on a mission to say that pantsers can write great books, that it is possible that we have our own process that is not inferior because we're not outlining. but then that needs to be true, y'all. We cannot, you know, try to have our cake can eat it too. If you're gonna be a pantser, you gotta revise. You're a revision heavy writer for a reason. All right.
So I'm I'm I promise I'm getting off my soapbox now. but part of why I'm so passionate about this is because I was a teacher for eight years. I taught high school English. And when I was first starting out as a teacher, I was still in that mindset that everyone must outline. That's what I was taught when I was a student. That is what I was taught in teacher training. the school that I worked at was very much, you know, every kid has to go lockstep through the same writing process.
If anyone is familiar with Achievement First, I worked for the Achievement First School System not exactly proud of that looking back. I mean, I worked with some wonderful people and some wonderful kids, but the school system has some issues, and that is why I am no longer there. But you know, it was incredibly rigid. That is what I was taught as a teacher.
That not only was I taught that, you know, every kid has to write an outline, I was literally at one point instructed to run a writing workshop in which we worked through the outline step by step. And I was supposed to say, okay, everyone has five minutes to draft their thesis. Set a timer. Then you know, everyone has to be done with their thesis in that five minutes. Then we move on to writing the topic sentence for the intro paragraph. Again, set the timer for five minutes. Everyone has five minutes to draft that part. Like it was supposed to be so rigid.
And I know some of you who went to functional suburban schools are like, what the heck is she talking about? That's high school. That sounds like a kindergarten classroom. You are correct. Like I said, very toxic, very problematic. I could talk about that forever. So if you want to DM me and talk about the state of urban education, please feel free. I'm at Olivia Helps Writers on Instagram.
But the point is, I was raised in that one size fits all writing process. I was taught as a teacher to keep perpetuating that one size fits all writing process. And then I started writing fiction. I had my come to Jesus moment in which I realized that my type A color-coded planner self was actually a pantser, finally finished a draft after years of just writing outlines that never turned into anything. not because I was undisciplined. Y'all, I used to wake up at 4 a.m. as a teacher. I am not an undisciplined person. I simply realized that for me, I could not shape a story through an outline. I had to get in there and start drafting. And that is when all of the creative, wonderful things came about. I love revising. Revision is my favorite thing in the world. That is how I pivoted into becoming an editor. you know, kind of abandoning my own writing along the way, though I am starting to pick that up on the side. But I had this realization that what was keeping me from finishing drafts for all those years was me trying. To force myself to be a plan heavy writer when I was always meant to be a revision heavy writer.
But I didn't just stop with my own experience. I decided to run an experiment in my own classroom. By that point in my teaching career, I was no longer at an achievement first school, which meant I now had the freedom to do whatever I wanted in my classroom. I worked at a wonderful charter school that was the complete opposite, so supportive and encouraging of students and teachers where I was trusted as a professional to, you know, shape my classroom the way that I wanted to. And I used that freedom to test whether or not people's writing processes were truly different. I just decided to run this experiment in my class. I was not explicitly testing the plotter versus pantser theory. I was testing whether I could improve the outcomes in my classroom by giving students choice.
So what I decided to do was for the beginning of the school year. We had a creative writing project. Students essentially took an issue that they cared about and they wrote a short story that exemplified the issue. I know, awesome project, right? I got to do whatever I wanted. It was so much fun. And in that project, I decided to create three sets of deadlines. Kids could choose the plotter track, which I actually use these names because why not? It was a fiction unit. So I decided to teach them the industry language. So first I had the plotter track. Those students had a good chunk of time just to outline. Then they turned in their outlines to me for feedback. Then they wrote their draft, got some feedback on that, then they turned in their final. I also had a pantser track. Students had no outline requirement whatsoever. They turned in a rough, rough draft, got feedback on that. Then they turned in a second rough draft, got feedback on that. Then they turned in the final. Then finally I had a middle track that was in between. Those students had less time to outline than the plotters, but they still turned in an outline. Then they wrote their draft, got feedback on that, then they turned in the final.
And when I ran that experiment, at first students looked at me like I had three heads because what do you mean we get to choose our own deadlines and interim requirements? You know, obviously everyone had the same final deadline for the project, but in between, you know, the pantsers were turning in rough drafts at one point, the plotters were turning their outlines, like days after the kids who were in the middle track, you know, there were different deadlines moving around like crazy. It was a little bit of an organizational nightmare, but remarkably for the very first time in my entire career as a teacher, going from one urban school district to another, every single kid in the class turned in something for that assignment. I am not going to tell you that all the assignments were good, because that would be a lie. But everyone turned in something. And if you have worked in education, particularly urban education, particularly post-COVID, that was a miracle. I mean, this was like during COVID times, my friend. We were back in school, but we were still wearing masks. And every single kid turned in something.
And you know, that doesn't happen in education. and that was really the moment that galvanized for me that it isn't just a matter of discipline. It isn't just a matter of, you know, not wanting to outline or not wanting to do a certain thing. I remember earlier in my career, I would have kids who just sat staring at their computers trying to outline and I just thought those kids are not willing to do the work. They are lazy. That is a story in our heads. I feel horrible about it now. but I really believe that for some people the outline is the problem. They do not need that outline. They need to just write the draft and then they need to revise it.
And you know, going beyond just people turning things in, I had A's in the pantser group, I had A's in the plotter group, and I had kids who failed in both groups and you know obviously in the middle group as well. And it really goes to show that it is not one process over the other, it's how you commit to your writing. It's how you treat your writing within your process. Anyone can be great at any point in the spectrum if they're willing to do the work to make their story great. And whether that's happening as you outline, as you draft, as you revise, obviously you are going to need to go through all three of those steps in some form. But at any point in that process, you can make your story better if you're willing to do the work you just have to know yourself.
If you are allergic to revision, get feedback on your outline, make sure that outline is flawless before you start drafting. If you are someone who could waste years of your life just answering world building questions and never actually get to the page, maybe it's time to drop that and just start drafting. you know I think it's one of those things you really need to experiment because on paper I would never be a pantser.
Like I said, color-coded planner. I am the person who when I travel, I have everything down to the minute. it's funny because I I really mean that literally, because I actually had a friend who was trying to renew their work visa and they needed to provide an accounting on their activities during a certain, you know, international trip that we'd gone on during college and I had that record like years later, like literally years after we graduated, they came to me so they could provide documentation for their visa because I had the record of our trip.
So on paper, total plotter energy. Except when I sit down to outline, I get lost in the weeds. and it's just not where my creativity flourishes. I cannot fully shape the thing just planning it out. I have to get in there and start drafting and I know that there's gonna be work on the back end to, you know, really discover who the characters are and really discover what's going on behind the scenes. But I need to have the raw material first. Otherwise, I will get lost in that. And that's fine. It's not because I'm undisciplined. Every person is different, every person is unique. I just really go back to that classroom and the energy that existed when kids realized that I was not joking. They actually got to choose how they could work. They actually got to discover for themselves how they did or did not work best on a writing project. and that's invaluable.
And I think give that to yourself now. Obviously, for most of us, that is not what we experienced in high school, unless you happen to be in my classroom for those last couple of years of my teaching career. That was not your high school experience. But you can give yourself that gift now and discover. Are you a plan heavy writer? Are you a revision heavy writer? Where are you on the spectrum? What works for you? And then from there, take that process, refine it, figure out how to get your story, your writing to greatness, because you can do that no matter what your actual process is, as long as you are willing to take that process and do what it takes to make it great.
Alright. Thank you so, so much for listening to another episode of the Better Writer podcast. I hope this was a fun one. I feel like I was ranting for the whole, you know, last 30 minutes. But hopefully you have enjoyed it. and I would love to have you back for another episode. So don't forget to follow or subscribe wherever you are listening to or watching this show. And if you want to hear even more from me, I have a weekly newsletter. The Better Writer Weekly comes out on Tuesdays straight to your inbox. You'll get more writing insights, stories from my life, and pictures of my puppy Minerva. So if that is something that interests you, you will find the link to subscribe wherever you're watching or listening to this show.
Thank you again for listening. Have a wonderful, wonderful week. Keep writing, keep getting better, one word at a time. See ya.
